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Let the market handle this. Simply close stores with high theft rates, which will happen anyway since they’re unprofitable.
by TedShiller 5y ago
Let the market handle this. Simply close stores with high theft rates, which will happen anyway since they’re unprofitable.
- oh_sigh 5y agoThat's literally the first sentence of the article.
- gpt5 5y agoWhich seems like a bad deal for everyone (the stores, the people in the neighborhood, and even the shoplifters).
- ameminator 5y agoThe community gets the shopping options it asks for, apparently (or not, according to the article).
- e4e78a06 5y agoAlready happening in SF as we speak. And the remaining stores have super jacked up prices to the point that it's cheaper to order delivery from a store in the suburbs, pay a tip for a driver, and pay them to do the shopping for you (Instacart) than it is to buy locally. It's clear that Prop 47 and the general mentality that property crimes don't matter and prosecuting them is racist has failed.
- notthemessiah 5y agoI'm sure shoplifting is to blame, and not the price of rent and lack of new construction.
- e4e78a06 5y agoThey're both problems that can be attacked independently. You can crack down hard on shoplifters and reselling rings but also build lots of new housing. Price of rent is a function of housing supply and demand. Rent control just pushes the costs to less visible things like security deposit, maintenance, etc.
- notthemessiah 5y agoThey're more interconnected than at first glace. When ambitious people can't be stakeholders in the economy due to NIMBY gatekeepers, they resort to less socially-acceptable means of getting ahead and making it big. I don't think "reselling rings" are that easy to crack down on, they probably are not rings at all rely on apps and services and operate on a more individual basis. The very framing of such is just used to justify greater police budgets, but this is something far harder than even the drug war to win. The only way to win it is to make sure entrepreneurial sorts find it more profitable to do things legitimately than it is to plunder goods, and ensure jobs and job training are more accessible than a life of crime.
- nine_k 5y agoI suppose you're not suggesting that people whose ambition to become business leaders is hindered by high rent turn to running criminal rings?
- notthemessiah 5y agoIf you grow up in a neighborhood where the only example of financial success around you is a drug dealer, and every honest person is losing, what would you want to be when you grow up?
- e4e78a06 5y ago> When ambitious people can't be stakeholders in the economy due to NIMBY gatekeepers, they resort to less socially-acceptable means of getting ahead and making it big I don't ever remember thinking of drug dealers at any school I went to as "ambitious". Some drug _users_, yes, but they never stole stuff to fund their drug habit. It was more like recreational, responsible alcohol for them. And now that we all have careers it's pretty clear who was actually ambitious and who wasted their parents' money.
- ardit33 5y agoAbsolutely not. There are actually human costs to it. My parents are old (in their 70s), and they are lucky to have a CVS near by where they can walk and get their medicine and basic needs. Pharmacies and grocery stores being forced to close due to unchecked theft inflict pain and major lowering of quality of life to people around the neighborhood, and especially to people that can't just drive to the next store. Also "just use online", may not be a solution. Medicine (especially pain pills), are continuous target of thefts. Once the stores are closed, then the organized criminals move into homes. Next you will have to start installing heavy iron bars in your home. If you walk in parts of brooklyn, you'd see older homes that had massive bars even in 2nd floor windows, just to keep the people safe. The market just doesn't solve the collapse of society. Unchecked theft costs to all society.
- creamynebula 5y agoI don't know what needs to start happening for society to reach a consensus that we need to address the problems of poverty and inequaliy in income and access to good education
- coryrc 5y agoWe live in a democracy, more or less, which allows the majority to dictate what is acceptable in society. The majority has decided that a subset of society is not beholden to the laws the rest of us are. Jim Crow laws were unjust and it was the victims who had to fight it. Elderly people have most of the wealth in this country, if they've got a problem then they should put that wealth to work convincing a majority of their views.
- GiorgioG 5y ago> Elderly people have most of the wealth in this country, if they've got a problem then they should put that wealth to work convincing a majority of their views. The elderly people with this wealth don't care - they can afford to live in places where this isn't a problem. Everyone else (young and old alike) can take a hike as far as these rich old folks are concerned.
- 5y ago
- supernovae 5y agowhen has capitalism ever fixed crime?
- qbasic_forever 5y ago2008 financial crash saw almost no bank executives prosecuted, so from their perspective banking crimes are fixed and not a problem anymore.
- qbasic_forever 5y agoWhy should my grocery store close because people are stealing things from it? What do I do, just starve?
- ejb999 5y ago...because they are losing money? stores aren't in business to feed you; they are in business to make money. Would you continue to own and run a store if it lost money for you? Better have deep pockets then.
- SllX 5y agoYou’re being downvoted for this, but you are right, and it’s why we have—or ought to have—a vested interest in enforcing our laws.
- qbasic_forever 5y agoHow does society function if no one is tasked with feeding the people? Are we all supposed to own farms? How does that work with 330 million Americans? Who is going to have time to do things like design the hardware and software that power the devices you use to post on the internet--they don't have time to do that and work their personal farm for food...
- SllX 5y agoNo one is actually tasked with feeding people. We benefit from the surplus of farms which sell their excess for profit, and you are then tasked with securing the means of purchasing food if you want to eat. Or: farms task themselves with producing food in the same way programmers task themselves with producing software.
- qbasic_forever 5y agoWhy should the farmers stay in business of making food if they could make more money as programmers, bitcoin traders, etc?
- baryphonic 5y ago> Let the market handle this. Not sure I want that. When the state refuses to protect private property, the market solution tends to look more like Vito Corleone. That's especially true when it appears certain organized crime groups are perpetrating coordinated thefts like the one at Nordstrom. The big corporations can't afford to to have mafia payments on the books, but they can afford to pack up and leave or encase everything in cages. The local mom 'n' pop store will be willing to pay a bit for protection.
- notthemessiah 5y agoThe market is also what provides demand for cheap goods at a time when prices are increasing, and corporate profits are skyrocketing. Retail theft is the correction.
- night862 5y agoKind of, though: In the past stores had Loss Prevention departments which were tasked with this stuff. It's never been the case that nobody shop lifted, its just now that the economic race has led retailers to externalize and cut costs. It's very, very annoying to have some mall cop following you around, so now its a camera, later it will be many more and much better cameras with a lower paid employee with much less engagement with their occupation. I reject that it is an impossible task for national retailers. I suspect walmart has a workable model: They move stocking into the shopping hours and use all of their employees as a micro-scale surveillance network. Why should society foot the bill for for police and such to watch private property like this and essentialy persecute the population because the national retailers don't want to invest in the cost of doing business? Inside of a store, it's completely reasonable and totally possible to just have an employee around. Policing organized crime is the job of the FBI, if my knowledge of this stuff is a little bit correct. All of this surveillance garbage we've been ignoring for decades was supposed to solve these problems, but it is clearly not capable of doing so.
- nine_k 5y agoI think that the OP is ironic, and suggests that the market will force everyone reasonable to leave, exposing California as a failed state. While that would indeed he instructive, it also would be quite destructive. I hope California can return to protecting the liberties that were already well-understood 200 years ago without going to such extremes.
- yibg 5y agoYea I mean why have police at all? Just let the market sort out all out. If people keep getting shot, we’ll eventually the neighborhood will empty out and no more shootings!